Goes Without Saying
by alicedrowned
Summary: Claire must come to terms with her fate.


GOES WITHOUT SAYING

"You must raise this child alone."

Darkness enveloped both her and Aaron, its frightening proportions blotting out the other survivors' tents, leaving them isolated. Alone.

Claire shivered against this darkness, seeing no way out of the opaque gloom. She picked Aaron up and out of his cradle and held him close to her breast. The sound of his soft, baby gurglings only mounted her sense of fear. She wanted so much to make out the sillhouette of one of the other survivors through this strange, black blankness, to reach out to someone who could help her. But her voice had been stolen, her energy solely focused on the safety of the baby.

A small shadow began to form in the darkness. It grew as it moved towards her, a familiar lilt to its gait. She held Aaron even closer, muffling his cries of protest. She didn't care. She had to keep him safe--If it were one of the Others coming back...

"Hello, Claire."

She let out a sigh of relief, letting down her guard. "Oh, thank God Charlie, it's only you." She relaxed her grip on Aaron, who was now crying with enthusiasm. "What's going on? Did a fog roll in off the ocean or something?" She smiled at the mist encircled figure of Charlie. "I nearly lost my heart, there. You scared the crap out of me." Aaron continued to fuss in her arms, and she turned her back on Charlie to give her baby a massage to his tiny back, her voice dropped to whispers of assurance that all mothers give crying infants. He was crying more than ever, now, but she forced patience into her being. She only hoped the rest of the beach would be so understanding.

Charlie remained in front of her, the dark envelope of mist that had overtaken the beach still obscured his face. "We don't get fog like this in Sydney," she said. "I guess this is more like London. More like where you grew up."

Aaron's crying grew stronger by decibels. She could sense the other occupants of the beach stirring. She felt a pang of frustration, embarassment, even. What kind of mother was she if she couldn't keep her kid quiet? She'd be like that mum she saw regularly at the local mall back home, the one who always had four uncontrollable kids in tow. That woman was a total skank, Claire remembered, her hair unwashed, big black circles under her eyes and her skin a pasty white. She looked like she hadn't slept since she'd been born herself. They'd been in The Gap, Claire remembered. The woman's kids were all screaming and her eldest, the three year old boy, he got it in his head to play in the shop window. He banged on the glass with a dinky car and tore the shirt off the dummy, and the salesclerk went berserk, telling the woman to keep an eye on her damn kid. The spotlights in the window were hot, the salesclerk explained. He'd burn his grubby little fingers.

The mother was like a zombie, her movements slow, her reaction to the chaos around her was to remain calm, unmoved, unflinching. Claire knew by watching the woman that if she'd been in that situation, and had there been a clear exit sign, she would have run for it, to leave her mess of a life behind. Claire would have bolted for freedom, let The Gap deal with the four screaming kids, she'd be out of there!

But the mother only sighed and ignored the increasing pleas, "Oh for fucks sake...Oh dammit!" from the store clerk. She picked up a pair of jeans and took them to the checkout. She didn't try them on. She was resigned to her role, Gap Prison Uniform in hand. Sad and bereft of options, the woman left the store, her kids still screaming, the three year old boy nursing a burn blister on his thumb.

"I'm so tired, Charlie," Claire admitted. "I love him more than anything, but sometimes...Sometimes I need the help. I wish I had someone to lessen the burden. Sure, I love the little mite, but damn I'm just so tired..." She bit her bottom lip and shook her head. "D'you think Sawyer's up? Maybe he could read some of the menu plans to him again."

She smiled, only to hesitate at the silence coming from Charlie. "Charlie?" she said. She reached out with one hand towards him, to touch him. "Are you okay?"

Charlie stepped closer, and instinctively, Claire stepped back.

"What's wrong with you?"

Charlie didn't respond.

The old fear was coming back in waves, the terrors and heart wrenching, gut liquifying sensations she'd had when Aaron had been taken from her--Taken by them.

She could not make out Charlie's lips in the gloom. They were moving, but no sound was coming out, at least, none that she could readily identify.

Charlie was whispering.

She held Aaron close, the tree behind her digging into her left shoulderblade. She could roll a little to the left, she thought, she could run with Aaron in her arms, run away to someplace safe. To Jack, to Sun, hell to Sawyer as long as she could get away from this spectre that pretended to be Charlie.

He moved closer, his features coming into light.

Eyes sunken, face grey, pupils dilated, cloudy. Like a corpse in the rain, like a junkie long since gone and found dead by a dumpster, like a man melted cruelly into himself.

He smelled mossy, sweaty. Sick.

"Claire," he said.

"Get away from me!" she shouted at him. "Get away from us!"

"You alone have to raise the baby, Claire. Only you. Alone..."

She bolted upright from where she'd been sleeping, to terrified to scream, the cry frozen inside of her gut. She had a sudden urge to be sick. Beside her, in his cradle, lay her infant son in all the comfort of sleep, his cherry mouth suckling air. It was all she could do to not scoop him up and run off into the jungle, away from everyone, no matter how kind they'd been nor how sincere their offers of 'help'.

She picked Aaron up so as not to wake him and kissed his perfect forehead. She rocked him, gently, the motion soothing her own nerves more than the comfort for her baby. She brought her lips to his tiny, sweet smelling ear.

"Who the hell needs a pair of grubby Gap jeans anyway?" She smiled against his forehead. "Besides, I've always looked better in skirts."

Without her recognizing it, the darkness receded far back into the jungle, dissipating like smoke. Disappearing like dreams, fears and warnings.

Aaron sighed.

END


End file.
